A significant change could be coming to Newport city government. What's being proposed

The city is considering a major reorganization to the way its departments are structured by consolidating 11 city departments into three “super” departments.

“There’s an enormous amount of information that flows from the City Manager’s office to the departments and back again on a regular basis, and that information is not just from the departments, it's from the outside,” acting City Manager Laura Sitrin said. “We need to find some way to streamline some of that process so that information doesn’t get dropped or lost.”

The proposed “super” departments would not eliminate any existing departments or change any job titles, Sitrin explained to the Newport City Council on Wednesday, but they would reduce the number of departments reporting directly to the City Manager’s office. The three “super departments would be the Public Safety Department, which would include the Police Department, Fire Department and Harbormaster’s Department; Administrative Services, which would include Finance, IT, the City Clerk and the Canvassing Department; and Resilience and Sustainability, which would include Public Services, Utilities, the Planning Department and the Zoning Department.

The latter of the three super departments would also have a new department head, the Director of Resilience and Sustainability, who would report directly to the City Manager. The director would be in charge of overseeing any plans or projects related to making the city more resilient to flooding, infrastructure problems and climate change issues. They would also oversee the creation of a multi-year Resiliency Plan to address those concerns.

“There’s been some collaboration, but not every department knows what the other one is doing on a regular basis,” Sitrin said.

Unlike the Resiliency and Sustainability Department, neither the Public Safety nor Administrative Services Departments would have new leadership positions, as Sitrin said the departments in those categories already work closely together and one of the current department heads would lead communications to the City Manager’s office.

Sitrin proposed the administrative reorganization at a City Council workshop on the city’s Capital Improvement Plan for Fiscal 2025, during which city administration presented infrastructure projects needed to be undertaken for feedback from council. The idea came as a result of seeing the infrastructure issues and needs the city has had over the past six months, Sitrin said, and that resilience and sustainability in particular should be a main priority for the city.

“We need to put it front and center because otherwise, 10 years from now, 15, 20, 30 years from now, the city is going to be in serious trouble if we don’t start addressing these things by taking an innovative and holistic look across all departments, across all investments, across everything pretty much that we’re doing to make sure that we’re looking at everything through the lens of resilience and sustainability,” Sitrin said.

In addition to prioritizing infrastructure concerns and reducing the amount of direct reports to the City Manager, Sitrin said the reorganization would allow the city to react and adapt more quickly to emergencies. The communications and Human Resources departments would all still directly report to the City Manager.

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At the workshop, Mayor Xay Khamsyvoravong expressed support for Sitrin’s idea, while Councilor David Carlin said he was hesitant to give the idea informal approval without hearing from residents. Councilor Mark Aramli encouraged the idea of reducing the number of direct reports coming to the City Manager’s office.

While Sitrin is proposing this change to the department structure at City Hall, the city is still undergoing the hiring process for a new City Manager. Sitrin was chosen as acting, or interim, City Manager after the former manager Joseph Nicholson retired from his position in May 2023.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: 'Super' departments proposed for Newport city government structure